India's army seeks military space program

India said that it needs a military space program to defend its satellites from threats like China's newly revealed ability to shoot down targets in orbit.

The comments by India's army chief raise the possibility of a regional race that could accelerate the militarization of space and heighten tensions between the regional giants, who have been enjoying their warmest ties in decades.

India urgently needs to "optimize space applications for military purposes," Gen. Deepak Kapoor said this week at a conference in New Delhi on the militarization of space.

He noted that "the Chinese space program is expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content." His remarks were first reported by the Indian Express newspaper and confirmed by the Defense Ministry's spokesman Tuesday.

China destroyed one of its own defunct weather satellites with a ballistic missile in January, becoming the third country, after Russia and the United States, to shoot down an object in orbit.

In February the United States shot down a satellite that it said posed a threat as it fell to Earth. Kapoor did not mention that, singling out China in a statement analysts said was designed to send a clear message to Beijing.

"In an unsubtle way this is related to China," said Ashok Mehta, a retired Indian army general and leading strategic analyst.

Kapoor said that while militarization of space by India is at "a comparatively nascent stage," there is an urgent need for a military space command for "persistent surveillance and rapid response."

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Anil Kumar Mathur said, "We are not talking about deploying weapons, but about self-defense." The Indian military does not have its own dedicated spy satellites and uses civilian ones to gather imagery and other intelligence. Other Indian generals speaking at the conference said a military space race is almost certain.

"With time we will get sucked in to a military race to protect our space assets and inevitably there will be a military contest in space," the Indian Express newspaper quoted Lt. Gen. H.S. Lidder as saying.

Ties between India and China - which together have one-third of the world's population - are at their closest since China defeated India in a brief 1962 border war. Last year, trade between India and China grew to $37 billion and their two armies conducted their first joint military exercise.

India has announced plans to have aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines at sea in the next decade and recently tested nuclear-capable missiles that put China's major cities well in range. It is also reopening air force bases near the Chinese border.